Cognitive development in adolescence

Question 1

Defining adolescence?

Answer 1

• “a period of physical, psychological and social transition between childhood and adulthood” (Spear, 2000)
• “Rather than age 10 – 19 years, a definition of 10 – 24 years corresponds more closely to adolescent growth and popular understandings of this life phase” (Sawyer et al., 2018)
• “begins with the onset of puberty and ends with the assumption of a stable adult role” (Damon, 2004)
• Transition between childhood and adulthood
• Biologically: onset of puberty, sexual maturity, brain reorganisation
• Socially: increased independence from parents and increased importance of peer group
• Cultural (and historical) variations

Question 2

Variation?

Answer 2

• Menarche = onset of menstruation
• Historical variation in timing of puberty as well as cultural variation

Question 3

Brain development in adolescence?

definition

Answer 3

• “it appears that the brain changes characteristic of adolescence are among the most dramatic and important to occur during the human lifespan”
  Steinberg (2010, p.160):
• change in the ratio of grey to white matter in prefrontal areas
• increase in connectivity
• changes in subcortical processes

Question 4

Brain development in adolescence?

Change in the ratio of grey to white matter in prefrontal areas

Answer 4

• Change in the ratio of grey to
  
  • Synaptogenesis:
    
    • In early years, each neuron forms synapses with thousands of other neurons, resulting in the formation of trillions of connections
  • Synaptic pruning:
    
    • In early adolescence, the overabundance of neurons and synapses must be eliminated. This reduces grey matter.

Question 5

Brain development in adolescence?

Change in the ratio of grey to white matter in prefrontal areas

Answer 5

• Change in the ratio of grey to
  
  • Myelination
    
    • Coating of the neurons to improve connections.
  • Axonal caliber:
    
    • Increase in axonal diameter improves efficiency of transmission.
    • These increase white matter through adolescence and into adulthood.

Question 6

Brain development in adolescence?

Increase in connectivity

Answer 6

• Connections between cortical (prefrontal) and subcortical (limbic system) areas increase throughout adolescence.
• Parallel increases in functional connectivity

Question 7

Brain development in adolescence?

Changes in subcortical processes

Answer 7

• In early adolescence, dopamine receptors are remodelled
• Increase in dopaminergic activity in prefrontal–striatal–limbic pathways
• These changes have been linked to changes in reward-directed activity.

Question 8

Brain development in adolescence?

Temporary imbalance

Answer 8

• early development in limbic systems; more gradual development of prefrontal cortex
• Dual systems model of risk taking and decision making (Steinberg, 2010)
• “heightened risk taking in adolescence is the product of an easily aroused reward system and an immature self-regulatory system” (Steinberg, 2009, p.744)

Question 9

what is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?

Answer 9

• Stages of development
  
  • Sensorimotor 0-2 yrs): intelligence expressed through sensory and motor abilities - bound to here and now.
  • Preoperational (2-7 yrs): able to represent experiences in language, mental imagery and symbolic thought. But unable to perform mental operations, e.g. represent multiple dimensions simultaneously.
  • Concrete operational (7-12 yrs): able to reason logically about concrete processes. Unable to reason purely abstractly or test hypotheses.
  • Formal operational (12+ yrs): able to reason about abstractions and hypothetical situations, generalise information and form experiments to test hypotheses.

Question 10

what is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?

Logical (formal) deductive reasoning

Answer 10

• Logical (formal) deductive
• Pre formal operational stage, children cannot ‘do’ this kind of reasoning.
• Once in the formal operational stage, young people can ‘do’ this kind of reasoning.

Question 11

what is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?

Formal operational stage characteristics

Answer 11

• Abstract thought – operations are abstracted away from concrete operations.
  
  • Interpropositional thinking – considering more than one proposition at a time.
• Realms of possibility – can apply logical thinking to possible realities as well as actual reality to think about what might be possible.
• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning – adolescent as apprentice scientist: can develop theories, generate hypotheses and test them systematically.

Question 12

what is Piaget’s tasks?

Answer 12

• Balance Scale problem (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958)
  
  • Tests interpropositional thinking – considering more than one proposition at a time.
  • Must consider weight and distance at the same time.
  • Only adolescents succeed.
• Pendulum problem (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958)
  
  • Tests hypothetico-deductive reasoning.
  • Concrete operational children try different pendulums, but not in a systematic way
  • Formal operational adolescents make hypotheses and systematically vary one variable at a time, then combine.

Question 13

what are the Critiques of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 13

• Overestimates formal operational thinking
  
  • Not all adolescents use formal operational thinking.
  • Some reach this stage later than predicted, or not at all
  • Formal thinking develops gradually
    
    • Not a qualitative shift in early adolescence
    • Not used consistently on all tasks.
• Theory assumes understanding is constructed and knowledge / experience play little role in development.
  
  • Training does increase formal operational thinking (Case, 1974).
  • Knowledge affects performance on operational tasks (De Lisi & Staudt, 1980).
  • Cross-generationally, adolescents have got better on these tasks suggesting environmental factors impact development (Flieller, 1999).

Question 14

what did De Lisi & Staudt, (1980) study?

Answer 14

• Individual differences in college students’ performance on formal operations tasks.
• 30 UG students (20-23 years) studying Physics, Politics or English
• 3 formal operational tasks relevant to each different subject
  
  • Pendulum task (Physics)
  • Political Socialization Concepts task (Politics)
  • Literary Styles Analysis task (English)
• More students showed formal level thinking on tasks related to their subject knowledge.
• 40-60% showed formal thinking on tasks not related to their subject knowledge

Question 15

what did Flieller (1999) study?

Answer 15

• Comparison of the development of formal thought in adolescent cohorts aged 10 to 15 years (1967-1996 and 1972-1993)
• Compared cohorts of children tested in the 1970s and the 1990s on 5 ‘Piagetian’ tasks, including conservation and pendulum tasks.
• Children were late concrete/early formal operational stage (10–12 years) or mid formal operational stage (13–15 years)
• 10- to 12- year olds’ performance improved by 5 points in a generation.
• Mean operational level of the 13- to 15-year-old adolescents was higher in 1996 than in 1967.

Question 16

what are the Post-Piagetian approaches?

Answer 16

• Adolescents as intuitive scientists (Kuhn, 1989)
• Children can construct theories and test them
• Cognitive development is domain-specific
• Different theories and methods for different domains
• Development is metacognitive
  
  • Does not involve underlying logical competence.